


the head on the door

by irrelevant



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Jay is my co-pilot, M/M, Mindfuck, bird boys, emotional incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-10-16
Updated: 2010-10-16
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irrelevant/pseuds/irrelevant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You want to stop me?  You're going to have to kill me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. first movement

**Author's Note:**

> For Gloss
> 
> Canon AU loosely based on recent comics continuity. Future fic, forget BftC happened, and Morrison!Jason does not exist. The original point of this was to write porn, and I tried, I really did. I ended up with mindfuck. Write where you live, I guess.
> 
> disclaimer: This is Arkham, Gotham. Reality isn't in it, so don't even _try_ going there.

Two weeks after they move Jason from the state pen to Arkham, the Joker comes back in a body cast.

They put him in the cell across from Jason's because they don't know any better and Jason doesn't clue them in. It takes three guards to get him through the door.

Jason presses his palms and his nose to the glass and breathes openmouthed until the surface fogs up, until green is just a blob of dark topping off white on white and Hernandez is rapping the wall with her baton hard enough to vibrate his lips.

"Back it up. You know the rules."

"Absolutely, officer," he says. "I do like to do my part, keep the machine slicked up and running smooth." He smiles at her because Joker can't, and also, she hates it.

Leans in, still smiling, squished and distorted against the glass. He'd lick it for good measure, but he's not up for playing my taser, your face with Hernandez. Not with Joker over there looking like he did after Jason was done with him the first time.

Hernandez growls at him. "I'm not a cop."

"Sorry, sweetie." Hands sliding down the glass, fingers splayed, let's play the blame game. "Memory's not all it used to be."

His tongue touches the glass with his breath and his words; the slick surface tastes like ice cubes fresh out of the manor's freezer at the ass end of August.

"Got a ton of pinprick holes up there, that's what the CAT boys told me." The second taste is warmer, wetter, ice melting fast, "But they're probably full of shit."

Talking and licking fogs the glass worse; he can't see Joker anymore. He can barely see Hernandez's snarl.

He tents his fingers, pushes backward off the wall and he's not Dickie, not anybody's Boy Limber, but handstands are easy-peasy and they fuck with Hernandez's brain. He waves at her – hey, hey Dickiebird, Jay made one hand! – before he flips himself back up and looks at Joker through glass he didn't just French.

Bare feet poke up out of the casts, dead fish belly white. One puke green toenail is cracked, caked sloppily over puffy flesh. The guards are trying to get Joker's legs and arms into the corresponding straps, and they totally suck at it.

He jerks his chin. "The fuck happened to him?"

She folds her arms, universal cop for shut up before I beat you down, but she says, grudgingly, "I heard Robin went after him with a crowbar."

A few doors down, Scarecrow's sobbing, begging the real Batman to come back and scare the shit out of him, please, pretty please. One more person who thinks Dick can't cut the mustard.

Not Jason. He has faith in the staying power of Dick Grayson's flawlessly codependent ass. What Gotham needs, Dickie will give, whether Bruce is around to see him do it or not.

Jason's got nothing anyone needs or wants, not even himself. Especially not what's bubbling up out of the Lazarus pit that used to be his gut.

He could stop it but he won't; the beauty of being batshit is no one expects you to self censor. Not that he _would_ , but it's out of him already, crashing through his glass larynx then trying to get back in the jagged hole, tiny panicked wings beating, clawing his throat.

It sounds like dusk in the cave, and it freaks Hernandez right the fuck out. He's a little sorry about that; for a taser-wielding sociopath she's a nice girl. Not sorry enough to stop.

He laughs until Two-Face screams at him to shut up, until Joker is screaming through his broken jaw, trying to thrash his way out of the cast.

Jason hopes the fucker twists himself a broken spine.

He laughs until they come in and make him stop.

\--

It's two days before they let him out of the restraints. Longer than that before he pisses and sweats the last of the drugs out, before his brain stops fizzing like a grape Zesti shaken not stirred.

The infirmary doctor is nice; Jason thinks he remembers kissing her hand, or trying to.

She smiles at him now, a half-patronizing, half-serious deal that gets him all tingly, then she smacks him on the nose with his med file and says, "He's fine. Hose him down."

So, maybe not so nice.

They bring him back battered and cold from the showers and dump him on his bunk. He stays in a fetal curl for a while, waiting for his muscles to warm up and ease, and then he gets up, walks barefoot and clean and loose to the middle of his cell. Waits for Hernandez to wander by.

It'll be a while, she's second shift. Jason's got nothing but time. He drops to the ground and gives Bruce fifty.

He's just switched hands again when she shows. "Hey, girlfriend," he says between measured breaths, "nice shiner." He nailed her with his elbow while they were trying to pin him.

"Fuck you," but she's coming over, tiny and dark and oh so pretty. Bruises like purple-black scales around one swollen, snake-mean green eye. "What do you want?"

She never calls him anything. They still don't have a name and she hates calling him Red and/or Hood, hates that she has to. There are no fingerprints, no DNA matches in _this_ system, and no identifying marks. No flies on Bruce's kids, no sir.

He takes the Hood's smile out, dusts it off and waves it like a red flag. "So many things, you would not even believe. But I'll settle for the man in black."

She wants to punch his nose out the back side of his head. He just about wishes she would.

"You think the Bat's gonna come out for some half-assed terrorist with no local connections?" She throws her head back when she laughs, far back enough that her black braid dangles past her ass. Pretty, pretty. "'Mano, you are not just loco, you're delusional."

"I know you are but what am I," he says, and his grin feels like trash-talking Jaybird goading Malone into touching him where anybody can watch, c'mon man, dare you.

He can see the grit of her teeth through her curled lip. The other guards think he's freakjob scum, but she fucking hates him. He'd ask her why, but he wants to talk to Dick more than he wants her to break her knuckles on his face.

Two hundred is enough push-ups. He rolls over and starts his crunches. "Tell Wolper I never got my phone call," he says and breathes, breathes. "I'm cashing it in. Light that baby up."

"Sure thing, crazy boy," she laughs. "Like Gordon doesn't have anything better to do."

"Figure he does."

He counts twenty in the crunch of his working abs. Fresh sweat springs at his hairline and in his pits, stinging his skin, wetting his clothes, releasing the ripe sour smell of him dried into the fabric. Scarecrow is crying again, soft and hopeless, and Jason works in time with the steady sound.

"He won't come." And now she's just being contrary because she's bitchy that way. God, he loves that about her.

He slaps his palms flat on the floor and tilts his head back until the top of his skull is scraping concrete and he's looking upside down at her feet. "Bet me." Starts the countdown in his head staring at her plain white sneakers, clean, laces tied in neat bows.

She doesn't last to five.

\--

He knows Dick some. Batman he knows in his gut and his brain and the place where his spinal cord meets his pelvis. Hernandez is lucky she's not a betting woman.

She's not around when they come get him, but he can wait a few hours to shove his win in her face, mostly because she's not the only or even the biggest target in his sights. He raises his cuffed hands, cocks his finger and points it at Joker as the guards shove him past.

Bang, he mouths. Pop goes the weasel.

Ashes, ashes, falling down to the ground.

He fell down years ago, last month and yesterday, and he'll do it again tomorrow, but he'll get back up.

Joker doesn't get up because he can't. He doesn't laugh, either, watches Jason go by out of dead yellow eyes. He doesn't smile much anymore, maybe because aside from the broken jaw, every time he does he pulls a stitch, opens a half healed cut and bleeds. His best joke _ever_ and Jason's the only one laughing.

"It's only funny if you don't have to explain it," Jason sing-songs under his breath and gets shoved forward again by the guard behind him.

"Move, freak."

"Anything for you, sweet thing," Jason says. "Anything but, you know, everything."

The backhand rocks him, cuts his teeth into his lower lip. He sucks the excess blood away and smiles at the newbie guard, who stares back, holding his reddening hand out like he doesn't know what to do with it.

"He's fucking with you," the other guard mutters. "Jesus, Morrison, get a grip." His hand is a sweaty flesh cuff on Jason's arm, yanking him forward. His badge swings and Jason reads _Miller_ upside down in six black block letters. "You, Hood – knock it off or it'll be your ass in solitary."

"Not until Bats gets his pound of my flesh." He jiggles his cuffs, rattles everyone's chains. "Come on, kiddies, let's do this little thing. I missed nap time and I'm getting cranky. You don't want to see me cranky."

Miller's right hook is one hell of a lot meaner than Morrison's shit-scared love tap.

Jason lets himself take it, lets the red haze take him. Lets himself laugh-spatter his split lip all over both of them just to see them flinch.

Morrison's voice shakes. "Christ, what if—"

"He's clean," Miller says. "He'd be tagged if he wasn't. Off your ass and on your feet, you crazy fuck."

He makes them pull him up, makes them drag him while he watches his blood hit the concrete floor in bright red starbursts.

It's more fun that way.

\--

They stick him in interrogation three and strap him into a straightjacket. Cuff his legs to his chair and flip the lights off on their way out.

He whistles Dixie badly in the dark through his swollen lip and works the jacket off while he waits. He guesses he should start working up to an escape, but he's not bored enough. Also, Joker's not healed up enough to really fuck with yet, and he has _so_ much fucking with to get out of his system.

Like the man says, though, there's no such thing as enough practice. He's still Bruce's lost boy enough to believe that. He pulls the last strap of the jacket loose and he's halfway out of the leg irons when Batman slides into the room like a shadow that threw away the body it stopped needing.

The door locks shut behind him. The lights stay off. "Feeds?" Jason asks.

"Neutralized."

He laughs. Can't help it. Dude made Batman.

Dickie's Batman, so much he even sounds like him.

Not like Bruce. Dick can't do Bruce – no one can do Bruce but Bruce, not even the big red S. But it's still Batman coming out of his mouth, not Dick Grayson, and that just cracks Jason's shit up.

The second leg iron goes; he covers the sound with his laughter and lowers the cuff gently to the floor.

"The East End explosion last year. We thought you were dead. I thought… what is this?" Dick says, and it is Dick—no one else can make a straightforward question sound like a plea.

Turn it around, turn it back on him. Drop the jacket and handspring over the table. Get all up in his space breathing his air before he can blink behind his cowl.

"I'm harder to kill these days, and it is what it is. Whatever you want, baby, I can swing it."

Touch him before he can stop it, fingers spanning cheek and chin and his mouth, just the corner of it. Press in where he's spit-slick and soft like he's been moisturizing the fuck out of himself.

Still so weird, looking at him instead of up at him. Batman's boots give Dick a couple of inches that aren't his and Jason's in his flippy-floppy slippers, and he's _still_ gonna be taller than Dickie at the end of the day, never as tall as Bruce.

He edges a finger up under the cowl, and it's Dick who says, "Don't," and grabs his wrist.

Dick's breath smells like days' old coffee and he probably tastes like hard sour cherry candy; he was always sucking on something the few times they patrolled together; sure as fuck didn't help Jason's perpetual fifteen-year-old hardon. He's older now, they both are, and Dick still smells like Dick. His hand tightens around Jason's wrist, but inside the frame of Bruce's cowl his mouth relaxes, parts under the pressure of Jason's thumb.

Stroke him there, watch his lower lip dip another notch down. Listen to the hitch in his breathing and wonder what's playing on the feedback loop in the guards' station.

"You never call, never write—" So soft, mouth wants so _bad_ to be a kiss… "How else is a guy supposed to get his big league big bro's attention?"

It snaps something loose inside Dick. Snaps it out of him, some sound Bruce would never have made, in or out of the cowl.

"You told me you got better. You—" Frustration this time, and his mouth, moving against Jason's thumb. "You suck way worse at communication than I do."

Jason moves in. He comes at him until Dick's breath is hot on his mouth, and Dick lets him.

He could be down on that hard cold floor, up against the wall. Face down on the fucking table, Dick has always been that much _better_ , but Jason's not any of those things.

"Flying with the big boys now," he murmurs, sucking up Dick's second hand coffee and the heat rising off his skin like he hasn't been warm in years, like he's forgotten the taste of Alfred's sweet Turkish sludge. "Speaking of, how's old red and blue and bulging all over liking the newer model? Did he trade up or down?"

The bounce of his head against the table goes off white and bright behind his eyes, and then Batman comes down on him like the Spectre on a bad hair day. He tastes blood for the second time in as many hours; this day just keeps getting better.

"Come on, Big Bird, you can do better than that. Thank you sir, may I have another!"

For both of them, it's always been a mouth problem. Jason can't shut his up and Dick can't keep his still. It gives him up, every time. Gives in on him, gives him away.

It's Dick showing his soft underbelly, Jason's seen it a million and one times, and the cowl makes it that much more obvious.

"So damn easy, Dickiebird," he whispers. He grips Dick's wrists at the gauntlets' weak points at the same time he brings his legs up.

The thump of Dick hitting the wall is sweet, but of course he's back up by the time Jason is, staring at him over the table. Just like before, places reversed.

"He's back in here," Jason says. He's tracing patterns on the slick, fake surface of the table, B + R 4evah, over and over without looking. Fuck knows what Dick sees. "But you know all about that."

Dick's trying on the silence + cape + jaw = superstitious cowardly freakouts Bruce used to own. He's not half bad at it. If Jason was anyone else, it'd probably work.

He presses down with his knuckles, cracking them against the table. "Did the kid do it on his own?" The slippers went flying with Dick. Jason curls his toes against cold concrete, bounces a little on the balls of his feet. "Come on, man, you're dying to tell somebody."

"Not you."

"How about Gordon? Does he know baby bird broke the clown?"

Dick's fists slam down on the table. He bends forward, his mouth twisted up around a snarl, which would be great, except he's wearing the wrong duds. "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You never did."

"Nightwing has entered the building!" Dick jerks back and Jason leans his hip against the table, taking up the space he just vacated. "Have you talked to a doctor about that little split personality problem? If not, you're in the right place. We got a couple of real winners on the premises – hell, Quinzel will even tack on a new psychosis for you, gratis."

Sure as crime on a Sunday, Dick is blinking behind the cowl. Jason chews on his thumb nail and thinks about time. He thinks somebody's is up.

Not his. It's too soon for that, and fate has a shitty sense of humor. "You find him yet?"

There's a definite sound there. Might be somebody's gloves creaking.

Jason doesn't bother looking up. Dick'll be gone before he does.

\--

Wolper is an overeducated dickwad who thinks he's a liberal. Actually, he's just an overeducated dickwad. Probably listens to Debbie Gibson while he jerks off in the bath staring at his framed poster of Bowie doing Ziggy Stardust.

As a human being and as a psych guy, he fails, and Jason would ask for a new headshrinker, but with his luck he'd get Quinzel, and wouldn't that be a fucking scream? Two Joker-obsessed freaks chatting about their feelings. They could swap childhood sob stories and braid each other's hair.

Yeah, no, not in this lifetime. He didn't dig himself up again for that shit. Wolper's an ambulatory place holder and Jason likes him that way; is going to keep him that way until he blows this place sky high and blows out of Gotham.

Wolper's like one of those really nasty zits he used to get at the join of his legs and ass back when he spent half his time getting chafed by Dick's armored panties; the guy's a crappy, non-life-threatening side effect, and someday Jason's gonna squeeze him until he pops. Until then, an hour every Tuesday isn't going to kill either of them. Except, today's Thursday. It's not time for Jason's weekly state-mandated session, but he's still standing in front of Wolper's door with Morrison behind him and no fucking clue.

Not that he's pissed – he's bored and messing with Wolper's head is an okay reliever of boredom – but he has this thing about surprises: he likes them best when they're happening to other people. Right now other people is him, and that's just not cool.

Morrison doesn't give a fuck what Jason thinks is cool; he's just dying to get done and get the hell away from here. He's freaked out and sweating like a pig, the reek of him so thick Jason's swallowing mouthfuls of his stink. "You gonna open that, or did you want to stare at my ass some more?" Jason says, and Morrison's sweaty hand falters around the knob.

Jason half turns and smiles at him. Morrison jerks harder at the knob until it turns. He reaches past Jason, shoves the door open and shoves Jason through. It slams after him, shutting out the rest of Arkham, and Wolper is behind his desk smiling, and Jason is going to cut that smile off his face because Dick is sitting in the crappy institution-issue chair Jason always uses.

The cheap plastic clock on the wall says two-twenty-two, old Harv's favorite time of day. Dick lifts his head, giving Wolper the same smile thousands of circus-goers have fallen for. Then he looks at Jason and changes.

Not much. He's still every debutante's wet dream. His shirt is oxford and his pants are knife-creased fancy. He looks like somebody's son/father/husband (brother). He looks like somebody else's very good time.

Maybe Clark's.

Definitely Bruce's.

The face and clothes and the body they're on are so perfect Jason's surprised Dickie's not breathing rainbow sparkles and farting attar of fucking roses. It's his smile that doesn't belong anywhere near those clothes. Jason wants to bite down on it until they're both bleeding.

"Take a seat, Jason," Wolper says, smarmy and smug, and fuck Dick for giving up his fucking _name_.

He's still standing in the doorway in cuffs while Dick is getting to his feet and saying, "Jay." Saying it like he uses the name every day, like he ever called him anything but kid and punk and (little wing) fuck up. He's moving like he means to touch, and Jason slouches down out of range into the chair closest to the door. The chain on his cuffs tinkles when he props his elbows on the rests, when he laces his fingers together in front of him and smiles. "Dickiebird."

Wolper's starting to look like he's taking a really painful dump, or maybe like he got hit with Joker gas. Dick is staring at Jason's mouth.

Jason licks his lips. Dick blinks and then he's looking where he should be, and Jason's always known Bruce picked them for their asses and their eyes, but Jesus fucking Christ. Fuck you, he mouths, still smiling. Fuck you _sideways_ , Dickie.

Dick's smile is too gorgeous to be real, and Jason would know. That's not how Dick looks at him.

"It would have been to your benefit if we'd known about your family before now," Wolper chides in his nasal tone. "Your brother's expressed a commendable desire to be closely involved in your rehabilitation."

You won't see Dick move until he's on top of you, in front of you on his knees, his hands on your knees, not if he doesn't let you. He's never let Jason have anything. Never given him anything but those stupid panties he never could fill right.

"You're going home, little brother," Dick says almost too quiet to be heard, and Jason knows, he fucking _knows_ Dick called Drake that this morning before he left the manor. Knows he calls the kid that as often as Drake will let him.

Ass and eyes, and everything else, Dick's always been the best. His hands tighten, gripping Jason's knees hard enough that Jason can feel bone wanting to separate from tendon. Jason drops his head back against the wall, banging into it on purpose for the sting. He's used to taking his knocks, Jesus yes. "You are a beautiful, beautiful bastard," he tells the ceiling. " _I'm_ gonna pull your lungs out through your nose."

Gonna love doing it, too.

"Yeah, Jay," Dick says. "I'm counting on it."


	2. interlude: Arkham Nocturne, sonata in three movements

In between months there's a shift, like Gotham's stretching, straining back into the shape it needs to be.

The clock's stuck on midnight.

The moon is waning gibbous.

The salt-rot fug of Arkham is sharper, metallic, and everyone inside her breathes in shallow gasps. They walk uneven circuits around their cells, screaming at the walls and in their sleep.

Two nightshift orderlies resign. The new shrink hangs herself in the women's shower; that's what the coroner says, but yeah, Arkham. Nobody ever really gets out of here, not even when they die to do it. That's too sane an ending for Gotham and temporarily defunct sanity can't stand up to the real crazies, even when the weather's making everyone want to claw somebody else's eyes out.

Copper and iron clump viscous and thick in the air, so thick it's like breathing blood. The smell and the unseasonable heat, plus the sound of Dent flipping his coin are enough to turn Wesker's submissive personality homicidal, but Zsasz doesn't need a better excuse than an uncut throat. Pulling a homemade shiv on Joker in group therapy makes his third attempt in a week. He lands in the infirmary with three broken ribs, a collapsed lung and a crushed larynx.

Joker squats in his cell sucking on his blood-crusted nails and giggling like a smashed kewpie stuck on one sound bite. He's out of the clam shell, but a leg, an arm and one wrist are still in casts; he spends most of his time scratching thick welts into the parts of his skin he can get to, trying to kill the itches he can't touch. The rest of the time he stares at Jason.

Jason doubles his pushup quota. He sweats pure salt and dreams in black and green and yellow and red. Walks everywhere on his hands shouting Suicidal Tendencies lyrics until Wolper gives up changing his meds and trying to talk him down and lets Hernandez threaten to gag him. Jason talks her into sparring him instead; two falls out of three, loser puts up or shuts up.

First time out, she dislocates his shoulder. She squats down beside him while he's working up to punching it back in and says, "I owed you for the eye. Heads up."

"You threw that on purpose," he pants, and she says, "You asked for it," and steps on him just right and also very, very wrong.

Jason sweats and shakes and tries not to puke. She pulls him up, waving off the other guards and hauls his sorry ass to the infirmary.

"You owe me another round," Jason mumbles, and she laughs at him.

"Bullshit. You're down, you're out, you forfeit. I get one more complaint, you're in the gag in the jacket for twenty-four, and you know I mean it."

Jason grins and leans. He was sick of Muir's masochistic bullshit, anyway. Also, his throat hurts from making his vocal chords go places they don't want to. In the infirmary, he mimes zipping his lips and throwing away the key, then he makes faces at Zsasz while the doc immobilizes his arm, so it's probably a good thing Zsasz is so high he's not tracking. His slack-jawed expression doesn't even change when Jason flips him off. There's a thin thread of saliva crawling down the side of his chin.

Jason looks away from old death superimposed over present psychosis and still doesn't puke. He hated drugs and hospitals before Batman's tires appeared on his horizon. Since then he's spent too much time on his back with needles stuck in him, and seen too much of what happens to people who like to stick needles in themselves to ever go there himself.

Mind altering substances aside, it sucks hard that there's a moratorium on the good stuff for dudes who got themselves flushed out less than a month ago. Zsasz is chilling in poppy land, but it's Tylenol without the codeine for Jason. He's wrapped up good and tight, and still feeling plenty of pain when Hernandez sticks her head in.

"You done coddling your wussy butt yet, crazy boy? You've got a visitor."

"We prefer the phrase differently sane, Ms. Hernandez," the doc says stiffly. Jason grins at her as he slides down off the table.

"Speak for yourself, beautiful. Thanks to the good offices of this worthy institution, I am as one with the bugfuck. Give me a new idea, undo all that expensive therapy the tax payers are footing, who knows what'll happen."

The guard at the duty station shifts uneasily, like he's looking for an excuse to use his baton. Hernandez rolls her eyes. "Play nice, bugfuck," she says, "and I just might break your other arm for you some time."

"Motherfucking tease," Jason says, and follows her out.

\--

Hernandez doesn't tell him who rang his bell, but there's only one person who'd want to, even if Jason still hasn't figured out why. Dick comes over when he feels like it and never stays more than fifteen minutes at a time. Jason hasn't figured out the pattern to his visits yet, either, but Dick was always pretty random and that hasn't changed.

Sometimes Dick is Dick. Sometimes he's not. But he's always _a_ dick, and one heat-sticky afternoon Jason tells him it's nice to be able to count on your family being exactly what they are even when they're pretending not to be.

Dick grins at him, lots of naturally straight white teeth and one crooked incisor. He leaves without saying anything else but he comes back again after dark and hangs upside down outside Jason's barred window because he can and Jason can't, and someday Jason's going to hurt him a lot for that.

During the day they're stuck in the single visitor's room saying fuck all to each other, Dick leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, Jason with his hands laced together behind his head picking camels and mopeds, and once a pair of snakes screwing, out of the water stains on the ceiling. It's better than a Rorschach, and it means Jason doesn't have to watch Dick watching him. Nighttime means the same thing, if only because it's not Dick who shows up after hours.

It's not Dick who's waiting in interrogation three tonight – _really_ not Dick. It takes Jason one stuttering heartbeat to recognize the jaw line inside the cowl. Less than that to take a swing at it.

"Leave," Batman tells Hernandez. She hovers in the doorway with uncharacteristic indecisiveness while Jason shouts, "Son of a bitch, you son of a fucking bitch," over and over and Batman pins him face first to the wall, twisting his good arm up behind him.

"Leave," Batman says again, and Jason's shouts should drown out every other sound but he hears him perfectly. The bastard doesn't even raise his voice. His hands don't ease up for one goddamn second.

"Leave," one more time. Some part of Jason's impressed. That's got to be some kind of record for resisting the voice, but everybody's got their break point and third time's the charm. The sound of the door closing is one more crazy echo. The wall is cool under Jason's cheek. Batman's breath is humid on the back of his neck.

"Jay," Bruce says, and Jason jerks in his hold and screams, fury trapped in sound.

He tries to rear back, tries to smash the back of his head into Bruce's face. Sometimes he feels like he's spent his whole fucking life trying to make Bruce, "Let the fuck go!"

There are so many things those hands could do to him; he's already had a few of them. They live under his skin, invisible faded bruises he pounds and bites back into existence just so he can prove to himself they were really there.

So many things, but never the ones he asked for. He's not asking now, and Bruce's grip is giving. Jason waits for what he knows is coming, and Bruce gives him the opening.

He's not going to pretend he's taking, because there's no way he could. Bruce is letting him come. Letting him kick and punch his way through Bruce's guard, only blocking when the blow is potentially crippling. When Bruce's back hits the wall he drops his arms, and then he's not moving and he's not blocking and his lip is splitting under Jason's knuckles.

He doesn't make any noise, doesn't ask Jason to stop, or try to stop him. Jason stopped screaming when he threw the first punch. His knuckles sting like a bitch from pounding on shit that's harder than they are, and he's dripping blood: some his, some Bruce's.

Bruce hasn't wiped the blood away from his mouth yet. Jason doesn't want to stop looking at it, but he does because he's licking it up, sucking it away until there's nothing left for him to suck on but Bruce's mouth.

Bruce doesn't push him away. He doesn't kiss him back, either, and it's pattern recognition, the son of a bitch is still stuck in his six-year-old feedback loop, and Jason's had enough of that shit. He bites into Bruce's lip until blood is trickling into his mouth and Bruce finally, fucking _finally_ wraps a hand around his jaw. His fingers tighten _ease up or I'll break you_ and Jason jerks back and snarls, "Do something for once, you stupid, self-righteous prick. I'm not gonna stop. Make up your damn mind and make me."

"Enough." They'd push each other for hours on the mats and the equipment and in the sims; five fucking minutes in this twelve by twelve cage and they're panting like a couple of pansy-ass civilians. "Enough, Jay."

He hates the stupid, irreversible noise that gets through his clenched teeth. He hates that his neck still knows how to bend, that Bruce still knows how to say Jay the way he did when Jason was fifteen and too stupid to live.

"You don't get to die," he says against the scruffy heat of Bruce's skin. "Not yet. Not until I say."

Bruce is doing something behind him with his hands. Jason wonders, distantly, if he's about to get neck-pinched into unconsciousness, but Bruce drops a gauntlet inside Jason's line of sight and wraps his bare hand around the back of Jason's neck.

Jason breathes in the suit's leathery chemical odors mixed with Bruce's sweat. Can't see, can't hear or feel or taste, he'd still be able to smell the difference between Dick and Bruce in the suit. "Both dead," he hears himself say. "No one left to kill but the Antilife freak's zombies."

"I know." Bruce's hand isn't moving. It's just there, skin to skin. "I'm sorry."

He's laughing silently at himself, not sure whether he wants Bruce's hand or the apology more. He's even less sure which one is harder to believe in.

He lets himself have Bruce's skin. In his head it feels like a minute too long and six years too short. Then he reaches up and pulls Bruce's hand off him. Steps back and looks at him, bruised jaw, split swollen lip. There's no blood, not even a crust. It's all in Jason's mouth.

"Get the fuck out," Jason says. "Don't come back."

He doesn't.

\--

They drag Pyg in raving about wings and dark and twos, oink oink, but Two-Face is silent and Jason laughs himself hoarse because this is one double feature even Harv won't touch.

There's footage from a private cam the day after that. It's all over the news on every station: Batmen, plural. It's easy to tell them apart if you're Jason.

Easier if you're the Joker. He's frozen in place on the common room couch, and every piece of him, sane and not, is glued to the screen. "Batsy, you're looking pretty good for a dead guy," he says after the clip ends. Jason hopes he's the only one who hears, "Darling."

He leans his elbows on the back of the couch, leans down so his mouth is level with Joker's ear. "You are one sick puppy, Mr. J." He picked that one up from Quinzel; he's using it because he's curious. The most predictable thing about Joker is how his initial reaction is always going to be the one you least expect.

"Flattery will get you – oh it's you," he says, looking up at Jason. His smile never changes; it looks the same now as it did when he was caving Jason's skull in. "How's about it, birdie boy? Ready to kiss and make up for dear old daddy's sake?"

Hearing and feeling your skull fracturing around your brain isn't something most head trauma victims live to remember. Jason didn't, except for how he kind of did.

The back edge of the couch bites into his hip when he leans forward. Someone just changed the channel and upped the volume, and he's making sure he's heard. "Want to know a secret?" he says.

Joker exaggeratedly widens his eyes. "Do tell, sweetums. Loooooooves me a secret."

They've been here before. He knows when Joker remembers; he can see it in the slipping smile, can feel his own smile widening in tandem. It's like he's feeding off Joker's sick amusement; for every millimeter of curve Joker's smile loses, Jason's grin gains one.

"Was the kid as good for you as I was?" he says. "Hell, I'll even buy better. He worked you over and then some."

Minute tells, Bruce used to say, will tell you almost everything you need to know. Joker's hard, but Talia was an enigma wrapped in a conundrum, and the lines around Joker's eyes tightened for just long enough to be a flinch.

Jason pushes lazily away from the couch into a full-body stretch; his so-called free hour is almost over. "I was going to kill you before I got out of here," he tells Joker, "but it's no fun shooting fish in a barrel."

"Todd," says Hernandez from the doorway. "Time's up."

The Joker shakes his head and tsks. "Ooooh, got you by the short pants, boychick," he giggles. "Well, what are you standing there for? Didn't your momma teach you not to keep a lady waiting? Oh sorry, that's right. She was too busy running away from you for any quality mother-son bonding."

It should hurt like motherfuck. He's surprised when it doesn't. "Todd," Hernandez says again, and there's a pissy edge to it Jason would encourage if he didn't have other stuff on his mind.

Some of the stuff is wiggling his fingers at Jason. " _So_ glad we had this little chat, we'll have to do it again some time. I'll pencil you in for Sunday brunch. You bring the champagne, I'll provide the crowbar. Ta-ta until then. Say hi to pointy ears for me won't you?"

"Nah," Jason says. "But I'll tell Robin you were looking for him."

If an eye twitch counts as a tell, the total absence of laughter as Jason walks out is Chemo in Blüdhaven.


End file.
